Blue Traveler
by Ice Queen1
Summary: Harvey and Mike talk about fathers and family while avoiding the rest of the office on Father's Day. Bromance. REPOST AND REWRITTEN.


REPOST. I suddenly recalled my very expensive writing education and thought "I don't have to have Harvey SAY anything – I can have him _think_ it, and then the audience will still know and he'll still be in character! WIN!" So if you already reviewed the much worse version of this, thanks, but kindly review again and tell me if I made it better or worse!

So here's what we can deduce about Harvey – he has a brother, just recently mentioned a father, and no mother or reference of a place called home. He's very protective of his brother, who at some point was in the hospital (I'm going to pretend like it was an injury versus illness), and at one point defends him against a bully. He was awesome at baseball and it's arguably his favorite sport. He has a serious affinity/affection for music, but not mp3's, which means he's an old schooler who thinks things sounded better "way back when". He couldn't afford law school on his own, and somehow Jessica finds him, sees something in him, and offers to get him through school while giving him a foot in the door in the mail room. When he did finally refer to his dad, it was with reverance, and a little bit wistful, so he obviously misses him, which means he's most likely dead.

Here's my theory on all of that. First Suits story, and this is Bromance, bonding over dads and music.

-SUITS-

Of all holidays, the one that seemed to bother the two shining stars of Pearson and Hardman was Father's Day. A Hallmark holiday that no one else really seemed to care about beyond sending their respective dads a card and a long overdue phone call. Some actually made the effort to go and see them if they were in town. But for the most part, it was a day like any other. Except to Mike Ross and Harvey Specter.

Mike and Harvey preferred to completely, totally, irrevocablly ignore it.

Mike actually took to hiding in Harvey's office, because even if people were scared of Donna as a watch dog, they were utterly terrified of Harvey, and wouldn't dare come in just to give him more crap work to do. For once, the two worked in relative silence, going through briefs and stacks of back paperwork for a new fraud claim, Harvey at his desk as per usual, neat little stacks set in order across the table top and Mike sitting on the floor with papers spread in a kaleidoscope of order only he could understand.

The music in the background was a low and sultry blues trumpet, and Mike found himself pausing more and more frequently to listen to it instead of reading through the mounds of paperwork.

What was more important, was he started noticing Harvey was doing the same thing. Except…he looked a little sad listening to it.

And Mike, never the one to pass up a chance to tease Harvey about showing emotion, smiled before opening his mouth. "I know they say music soothes the savage beast, but I didn't know it would work on the great Harvey Specter."

Harvey didn't answer immediately, just held up one finger as the trumpet slowly faded on its last note, and the record slowly spun to a stop.

Mike tilted his head questioningly. "What is it with you and music?" Mike gestured to the veritable fortress of records against the wall behind him. "If you like all the fancy things in life, why do you keep the dinosaur of the musical world to play it? Isn't it easier to have an iPod you can carry around with you instead of a record player?"

The corner of Harvey's mouth twitched in what amounted to his version of an amused smile. "Just because Steve Jobs put a vowel in front of everything doesn't make it better. Besides, not everything can be converted to digital format. And these sound better."

Mike scoffed. "Better? It sounds all scratchy and there's these weird little blips that make it sound like it's skipping all the time. How is that better than an mp3?"

"Because, smart ass, music isn't just about the quality of the sound. It's the feelings, the emotion behind it." Harvey briefly made eye contact with Mike before going back to his papers. "Music can lift you up, or bring you down, it can show you more about the person playing in two minutes than a two hour conversation…music is your soul."

Mike sat up a little straighter, brow crinkling as he studied his boss. "Harvey…I don't think I've ever heard you talk about _anything_ the way you just talked about music. Why such a big deal?"

Harvey shrugged nonchalantly. "Everyone has a hobby. Louis has the ballet and the theatre, Rachel has her food and dance, Donna has…God only knows what her hobbies are, but I'm sure she has one. Assuming she hasn't been recruited by the Avengers Initiative on her days off."

"Nuh uh. No way are you brushing this off like that." Mike shook his head, pointing his pen accusingly at Harvey. "What's the deal with you and music? It's more than a hobby, because you don't speak even remotely that passionately about cars, cards…just baseball."

Mike noticed Harvey's jaw twitch at the mention of baseball, and smiled to himself. "Ok. Fine. Don't want to tell me? I'll start the guessing game. You let me know when I start getting warm. You react strongly to music, the same way you do with baseball…and I know the story of you and the game. You were one hell of a pitcher until you blew out your shoulder and had to retire before doing anything but school teams. Which makes it personal, and an area of pride and pain at the same time. So music is probably the same way. You don't talk about the player, you talk about the music itself, the very craft of it and the 'soul' behind it, which means you knew it on a very basic level – someone who wrote or played and saw a lot of it. Or both. You never mention playing on instrument, so I'm going to guess it wasn't you who played, but someone else. Your brother?"

Harvey was now glaring at Mike, his expression an odd combination of anger, indignation, and…sadness?

"Shit. I'm gonna shut up now," Mike said, abruptly back pedaling. "None of my business. I'll just sit here with my highliters and not talk. Sounds good? Sounds great." He grabbed the nearest page and started scanning before realizing he'd already proofed it.

Harvey cleared his throat, and Mike visibly winced. "I said I'm sorry!"

"It was my dad, not my brother," Harvey said, so quietly that Mike wasn't sure he heard him.

Mike looked up, blinking owlishly. "Huh?" he said intelligently.

Harvey sighed, as if he was resigning himself to a conversation he really didn't want to have, but now was impossible to avoid. "My dad was a blues player. Mostly the trumpet, which is what you're listening to now."

"Your dad was a musician? That must've been awesome, travelling to all the blues lounges with your dad." Mike said, wistfully.

Harvey considered telling him that they weren't so much lounges so much as complete and total dives that catered to people with very shallow pockets and high tolerance for cheap booze. That yes, he spent most of his childhood travelling, but it was also leaving hand to mouth, constantly on the road with his father and brother looking for work. That he raised his brother in seedy bars, hotels and the bad ends of town while his father worked days doing whatever he could and nights playing blues at bars that would pay with food or tips only.

"Yeah," Harvey said. "It was." He smiled when he saw Mike's grin broaden. Let the kid have his fantasies. Harvey wasn't a fan of the pity party brigade.

"You and your dad must've been awfully close."

Harvey nodded. He remembered how no matter how busy or tired his father was, or how poor they were, his dad would play ball with his two sons in the park. How he managed to come to every ball game, every science fair, every parent/teacher conference, and helped when he could with homework. There was one memorable birthday his father snuck them all into a Red Sox vs Yankee game, and even though they were in the nosebleed section and could barely see the players, it was the best birthday he'd ever had.

"Yeah, we were close. He was a good man." The best of men.

"What about your mom?"

Harvey shrugged. "Mom wasn't really in the picture." By 'not really', he meant 'not at all.' Rose Specter was around just long enough for Harvey to have the barest memory of her – a memory of jasmine perfume, a flash of red hair, and an airy laugh. And then Harvey, his brother and his dad were on their own.

"Oh," Mike said, back pedaling quickly. "But still, it must've been cool, cruising the country on the ultimate road trip with your family…"

Harvey nodded, not saying anything. He remembered the one time they actually had to hop a train like Depression era hobos, and his dad almost died laughing from the idea of it. He remembered overhearing a conversation his dad never meant for him to hear – when the bar owner his dad was playing for said he couldn't have his kids there if he was going to play for him full time, despite the assurances they were well behaved and no one would ever notice them. The man insisted that if he was going to take his music seriously, he needed to be without distraction, and should give the kids up as wards of the state.

Until that day, Harvey couldn't remember ever seeing his father angry. He politely told the man to go to hell with a solid punch to his jaw, and walked away from the first full time musical position he'd ever been offered. All for the love of his family, in all their frayed and patchwork glory. His father was officially a superhero in his book after that. "It was hard, but my dad made it work."

"So how come you became a lawyer? Why didn't you get into the music industry?"

Harvey fought to control the emotions that question prompted. His reasons for becoming a lawyer were less than altruistic, bordering on a Monte Cristo-esque quest for vengeance. When Harvey was sixteen, his father was discovered by a recording label. They promised him fame and recognition for his work, and had him sign a contract before letting him in the recording studio. Harvey's father was a good man, and always saw the best in people, but he wasn't book smart. He didn't fully understand that the contract he signed gave the record label everything and left him with nothing at all. No lawyer would help them, claiming the contract was iron clad, and the only way to help them was if they had come to them with the contract before they signed.

Harvey's father died a year later, from what Harvey knew was a broken heart and soul.

Harvey was one year shy of a legal adult, so he had to make do with what he could to be able to provide for both him and his brother.

"When my father died, we were flat broke. I wasn't old enough to get a job, so I got small jobs that paid under the table. That's how I met Jessica."

And when he says 'met', he means 'was caught by'. Harvey learned how to read people at a young age how to manipulate and get what he wanted without them even realizing they'd caved to him until he was gone. In polite terms, he was a grifter. A damn good one.

That is, until Jessica Pearson caught him trying to hustle a first year associate outside of the firm. He thought for sure she would turn him in. But she surprised him like no other adult ever had – she offered him a job in the mail room, as long as he promised to stop conning people. It wasn't until a few months later when she realized his natural affinity for getting people to see his way on pretty much everything that she offered to pay for Harvard if he agreed to come back and work for her as long as it took to repay his debt.

"She liked me so much she offered to my tuition in return for my awesome lawyer skills when I was done."

"She picked you out of a crowd? Sounds like Oliver Twist." Mike suddenly beamed. "No…you're Audrey Hepburn in _My Fair Lady_! And Jessica is Rex Harrison!"

Harvey threw a thick folder at Mike, hitting his laughing associate square in the face. Mike didn't care, and kept laughing.

"_I _picked _her_, smart ass," Harvey growled.

"So…" Mike said, swiping a tear out of the corner of his eye. "Ms. Harvey Hepburn, you make a little more sense. Why you prefer to settle out of court instead of in, and why people think you're a little more terrifying than other lawyers."

Harvey raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Oh?"

Mike threw up his hand, two middle fingers together and index and pinky splayed out, then tilted it sideways. "You're straight thug from the streets, yo!"

Harvey snorted, smothering a laugh. "Why did I ever think you were a good idea?"

"_Good_?" Mike echoed. "I was a _great_ idea. Both of us from the blue collar, less-than-Ivy-League background…you wanted someone who never had anything, either…it means we have everything to lose if we don't succeed." He suddenly smiled sheepishly, a faint red tinging the tips of his ears. "Sorry, that sounded cheesy, didn't it?"

Harvey thought back to how he used to attack every case as if he was fighting for hos father. How he was convinced no one could ever do the job like he could because this was his crusade, not a job. Even after he'd destroyed the label company and the lawyers who screwed his father out of his dream (he loved that no one ever recognized him in court until it was too late – but really? Specter wasn't exactly a common name), Harvey was relentless.

Then Mike came along. Such the opposite of what he was at that age, he was amazed he liked the kid at all. Aimless, unmotivated, yet passionate and brilliant with everything to do with the law. His better half that reminded him of his little brother, who even after their life, saw the good in everyone.

"No, not cheesy. Accurate. But what about you? What was your dad like?"

Mike shrugged, looking embarassed. "I don't…really remember him that well. Or my mother. It's weird, 'cause I remember everything. And with them…it's like the harder I try, the less I can remember about them. I know my dad and I didn't always get along. He thought I was just parroting information back, not truly understanding. I wasn't the athlete he always wanted – couldn't catch a ball, throw a pass, or kick a goal. Mom usually ran interference. I guess…I mean, I know he loved me, but we never understood one another. The night they died, our last words were an argument." Mike suddenly found the floor very interesting. "I guess I'd be little Orphan Annie in this case, huh?"

Harvey scoffed. "Your hair isn't curly enough. Though I suppose you sound enough alike."

The file he'd thrown earlier came flying back, but he easily caught it. "Nice throw, _Annie_. Maybe you were just a late bloomer."

"Nice catch, _Audrey_," Mike said, just as sarcastically. "You missed your calling when you became a lawyer."

"Don't think I'm going to forget you compared me to a rehabbed hooker in your little fantasy," Harvey warned.

Mike's mouth dropped open. "Have you even _seen_ _My Fair Lady_? It's not the same movie as _Pretty Woman_. Who would ever buy Audrey Hepburn as a hooker?"

"Whatever. It's still a girl."

"You called me _Annie_!"

"Actually, _you_ called you Annie. I actually disagreed, if you remember correctly, o' Amnesiac Eidetic Memory Boy. Read your files, or I'll send you back to your cubicle with the other lemmings."

Mike opened his mouth to protest, but immediately clapped it shut again when Harvey pointed to the door.

They went back to a measured silence for a few minutes before Mike spoke up again.

"You know Harvey…I always wished I had an older brother who could actually teach me things. I guess what you aren't given…you can always go and find, huh?"

Harvey smiled without looking up, but his eyes drifted over to the shelf where there was a small framed picture of him and his older brother. "Or you just add to what you already have."

-SUITS-

You know…I decided that maybe writing on two hours of sleep and just trying to get something done like it's an assignment is really not the best way to go about things. Does this version seem more like the guys?

Oh. And someone asked about the comment in the last one – Mike' s last comment was in reference to the fact that Mike's history in fanfic has been done like half a million times, with every possible scenario. But I only ever found one with Harvey's dad, and one with his brother. That's it. So, read, review, let me know what you think!


End file.
